James Cawthorn

Illustrator, comic artist, essayist and screen writer, James Cawthorn died December 2, 2008, following hospitalization at Queen Elisabeth Hospital in Durham, UK. He died 19 days before his 79th birthday. Cawthorn's illustrations were used in books by science fiction and fantasy writers as diverse as Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, Michael Moorcock, L. Sprague de Camp, and Robert E. Howard. He is probably best known for his many illustrations for the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, as well as J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. With Michael Moorcock, he wrote the screenplay for the 1975 movie, The Land That Time Forgot. On a personal level, although I never met Jim in person, we regularly exchanged letters over a 20 year period. Back in the mid-1980s, Jim subscribed to my fanzine, SHADOW PLAY, and would contribute illustrations to some of the (self-published) projects I worked on. At christmas time, when exchanging cards, Jim would draw gag cartoons on the cards he sent me. During the course of mailing items to me, Jim would sometimes include the odd unfinished original from his adaptations of the Moorcock CHRONICLES OF HAWKMOON series. This Gallery is dedicated to the memory of Jim Cawthorn, a man I was privileged to have called friend.